Russia Revisits Pivotal Role in World War I

Anyone looking for human traces of World War I in Russia is well
advised to start on the Moscow metro, specifically the green line, which
runs to the river port where day-trippers cast off for trips up the
Volga River. But you have to get out three stations before that, in
Sokol.

It's a walk of 400 meters, away from the noise of Leningradsky
Prospekt, through a gate and past the Church of All Saints in
Vsekhsvyatskoye and across a small street to a park that opens up
between two tall residential buildings. It is one of the many green
spaces that provides a bit of fresh air to Moscow's 14 million
residents.

As in all parks in the city, mothers push their strollers through
fallen leaves and elderly women walk their dogs. There are joggers,
pick-up football games and people talking on their mobile phones. And
yet this park is special due to a slab of red granite that stands alone
in the middle of an open field. White letters engraved into the stone
read: "Sergei Alexandrovich Schlichter, student at the University of
Moscow, born on Dec. 31, 1894, wounded in battle on June 20, 1916 near
Baranovichi, died on June 25, 1916."

Nowhere else in Russia is there such a stone, bearing the name of a
soldier who fell in World War I. The almost 2 million Russians who died
in the conflict have disappeared from the country's memory -- because
the "Great War," as it was once called here, long found no place in the
historical narrative mandated from above.

So why did Sergei Schlichter's monument manage to avoid the censors?...